Bug 40823 - Specifying default context w/empty path outside of server.xml
Summary: Specifying default context w/empty path outside of server.xml
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Tomcat 5
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Unknown (show other bugs)
Version: 5.5.20
Hardware: All other
: P2 normal (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Tomcat Developers Mailing List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-10-26 13:05 UTC by Jon Wilmoth
Modified: 2006-10-27 18:20 UTC (History)
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Description Jon Wilmoth 2006-10-26 13:05:35 UTC
The documentation (http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-
doc/config/context.html) encourages users to define their context's outside of 
the server.xml file to enable hot-deployments.  The documentation also 
says "If you specify a context path of an empty string (""), you are defining 
the default web application for this Host, which will process all requests not 
assigned to other Contexts"  Unfortunately, unless the context is defined 
inside the server.xml file, Tomcat doesn't recognize the empty string path 
value.  The workaround suggested on the user mailing list was:
To specify the default app, you must first delete the existing webapps/ROOT 
directory, then install your app in webapps/ROOT (or webapps/ROOT.war) or put 
your <Context> element in conf/[engine]/[host]/ROOT.xml.

This bug is to request the documentation be updated to include the 
instructions for specifying the default context when it's defined physically 
outside of the server.xml file.  

The dev mailing list indicated this is also how Tomcat 6 works.
Comment 1 Mark Thomas 2006-10-27 18:20:23 UTC
Fixed in SVN. The updated docs will be included in 5.5.21 onwards. The Tomcat
website will be updated when 5.5.21 is released.